Top 5 Digital Marketing Trends for 2021
It’s time to say hello to 2021. While we expect to discuss many trends for the year ahead, here are some of ShoppingFeeder’s top digital marketing predictions for the rest of 2021.
1. Being Inclusive
When looking at 2020’s headlines, it’s clear that inclusivity is essential in our current society. Especially among younger audiences like Gen-Z or smaller groups, they are looking for high-quality depictions of equality from brands and businesses they would like to support. Keeping the same stale kind of content around for decades is not something that younger audiences want to see.
Instead, the trend for 2021 should focus on covering all races, body types, sexualities and religions, as well as representing differently-abled individuals for videos and images within your content. Your blog can also discuss this topic.
Identity is increasingly essential for consumers, shifting away from retailers who do not share this view. Diversifying your ads will be necessary for marketing in 2021.
2. Interactive content
Having interactive isn’t new – but it’s recently been accepted as a best practice and continued trend for 2021. Interactive content is significant because it drives engagement with your brand and provides enjoyable content to your audience.
Some kinds of interactive content include polls or surveys, competitions or giveaways, webinars and more. One of the main reasons to introduce interactive content in 2021 if you haven’t already done so is because it can increase the length of time users are actively engaged with your brand. This style of content can improve the user experience associated with your brand.
At the heart of interactive content is personalization, a larger trend that we’re noticing with digital marketing. By sharing ideas and voicing their opinions, customers feel more strongly connected to brands with interactive content.
3. Segmented customers
Like with interactive content, customer segmentation is not new but is a great practice. The idea is essentially to launch larger numbers of small marketing campaigns that target a specific audience, as opposed to a small number of large ‘catch-all’ campaigns.
One of the benefits to segmenting customers is that you can group your audience by behaviour, demographics, shopping styles and more. This grouping is useful so that you can create tailored content that meets their preferences.
For example, you may choose to have multiple newsletters that feature different products or services, shared with varying customers instead of everyone.
This knowledge allows you to tailor your content more accurately to suit their preferences; for example, having two separate email lists for big spenders and small spenders and sending different newsletters to each that feature other products. Similarly, your business can use segmented customers for creating digital ads, content categories and various forms of social media and community engagement.
4. Updating your SEO
As you may know with SEO, you need to make sure your business appears in local search results. Google is always changing their algorithms, so it’s essential to keep checking on your SEO.
The advantage to local SEO is that the people searching for businesses like yours are in the geographic location you want, and may have a stronger intent to buy from you.
If you are new, you should sign up for Google My Business and claim your listing or create a new listing for your business. Doing this can help you rank higher in Google search engine results pages, and allows you to add extra information.
You will probably want to add some local keywords into your SEO planning. For example, you should use the name of your city or town as the main keyword, but you should also add any other relevant keywords. If there are any landmarks or popular terms local to your area, use them in your SEO strategy.
5. The Rise of Google Featured Snippets
In 2021, people are using Google differently. Voice and mobile search are growing, and so are the goals for your business.
Have you ever been in a debate with a friend and Googled a relevant topic while you’re away from the computer? The truth is that consumers want information as quickly as possible, especially when on the move.
Google’s Featured Snippets have been around for a while, and exist such that you don’t need to click on websites for information anymore – it will appear on the first results page. These snippets often appear before the organic listings start. It’s become one of the most coveted spots for digital marketers.
It’s been reported that since 2018, 60% of search results fetch featured snippets instead of listings. More companies are trying to crack the code of getting their snippets featured above organic listings.
Digital Marketing Trends – Summary
Many of 2021’s digital marketing trends aren’t new but are instead reaffirming their positions as best practice for the first time. You can look forward to inclusivity, interactive content, featured snippets, SEO optimization and customer segmentation in 2021.
Which one of these digital marketing trends are you most excited about, or what marketing tactic do you think will reign supreme in 2021?
If you need help with setting up an eCommerce store on multiple channels, get in touch with ShoppingFeeder today.
